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Fritz Stolz in memoriam
One of the most radical heresies of early Christianity, Docetism, maintained that Jesus did not really die on the cross but only appeared to do so. Some docetic conceptions go further, denying Jesus a physical body altogether. This article argues that a claim that Jesus' sacrifice was not really accomplished appeared among the very first followers of Jesus. For first-century Jews Isaac provided an obvious model of someone who-in his akedah ("binding") as described in Genesis 22-had almost been sacrificed, but not quite. The figure of Isaac, which soon became a typos, or figura, of Christ for the church fathers, as the Akedah was understood as a sacramentum futuri, must have been the source of this docetic interpretation of the crucifixion. Various gnostic texts and traditions describe Christ laughing in heaven while Simon of Gyrene is being crucified in his place. This laughter of Christ has not so far been properly understood. This article proposes to see in it a reference to the etymology of Isaac's name, yzhaq ("he will laugh"). This etymology was widely known among first-century Jews. Philo, for instance, discusses it on various occasions, even claiming that Isaac was actually the son of God, not of Abraham, and that his mother Sarah was a virgin when she conceived him.
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One of the most radical attitudes to be found among the early Christians, Docetism soon became a generic term for some of the worst heresies fought by the church fathers. Oddly enough, this puzzling phenomenon does not seem to have elicited enough scholarly attention. In 1957 Gustave Bardy, who claimed that "les origines de cette erreur sont obscures," lamented the lack of a full-fledged monograph on the topic, and no such monograph has appeared in print since then.1
Moreover, there is no general agreement upon a convincing definition of Docetism, and one is at a loss as to the focal point of the docetic worldview. The two main approaches relate either to Christ's incarnation or to his passion: either Christ was not really incarnated, as the divine and matter could not have a common ground, so Christ would be totally spiritual in nature; or Christ was indeed incarnated, but did not really suffer on the cross. These two...